“If you take pride in everything you do, you’ll never have a problem in your life.”
I’m from Ojai, California. Remember The Six Million Dollar Man? That’s where he grew up in the show. Small town; oranges and avocados for miles. The walk to school went right through those orchards, so we ate our breakfast along the way.
We moved to Spokane when I was a senior in high school. My dad grew up in Springdale, and his whole family was here. He and my uncle partnered up on a business: bought a big trailer park and managed it. So I finished high school at North Central.
It was tough. This place was so laid back and conservative that I swore as soon as I turned eighteen I was going back to California. But my aunt got me a summer job at a grain elevator in Fairfield. When a semi showed up loaded with grass seed, that job—because I was so small and skinny—was to crawl in the back of the box trailer with a four-foot board tied to a cable, slither through all that seed all the way to the front, slide the board down, and whistle. Then a guy would pull me out with a pickup truck. That’s how we unloaded those trucks, all night long. Probably can’t do that these days, but this was back in ’81. That was pretty much how I spent my days: work, girlfriend, school—and most of the time I had better things to do than go to school.
I was living in Rockford back then, and my uncle had something behind his garage that I’d never seen before. “What’s that contraption?” I asked.
“That’s a 1969 Yamaha snowmobile.”
I just looked at him.
“You ride it in the snow,” he said. “You can have it if you can get it running.”
So I got it running—and decided that snowmobiling was the way to go.
I’d always had a natural aptitude for fixing things, I guess. My dad was a mechanic. He’d owned a gas station back in California. And when I was in kindergarten, he’d let me hang out in the shop. Back then, gas stations used to give away these different toys and stickers. So if my dad was working on a car and he needed to do something like remove the oil pan, but he didn’t want to climb underneath, he’d send me in and give me a sticker for every bolt I got off—and I’d come home with a big ol’ pile of stickers. And when I was in high school we had trade programs. We had woodshop and carpentry. We had autobody—that’s where I learned how to pound on cars—and we had automotive, which was rebuilding motors. All of that was available to anyone who wanted to learn.
I think that’s why I’m kind of a jack of all trades—mechanical, construction, carpentry, plumbing, electrical—and why this job is such a good fit for me. One day I could be climbing a tower crane to do some electrical work on top, another day I might be repairing a drill. And then one day I’m pulling orders and loading trucks. It’s never the same thing, and it’s always a challenge. You never know what’s going to happen when you unlock that gate.
My dad told me when I was just a kid, he said, “If you take pride in everything you do, you’ll never have a problem in your life.” And I took that to heart, you know? Everything is worth it if you think about it.
